Why Silicon Valley needs cranky critics like Evgeny Morozov

During a panel discussion at the UC Berkeley School of Law Monday evening, the 28-year-old author restated the litany of charges against high tech’s culture and apostles in his new book, “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technology Solutionism.”

By solutionism, a term Morozov borrows from architecture, he’s referring to the notion that most of the world’s ills can be fixed with online technology, if we simply devise the right algorithms, sensors and social networks.

For the Belarus-born Morozov, a contributing editor to the New Republic and recently a visiting scholar at Stanford, this solutionism can stem from naive idealism or cynical attempts to advance self-serving business ends. But in either case, he sees it as a dangerous mindset for the world.